


saudade

by rayfelle



Category: Original Work
Genre: Apocalypse, Interdimensional Travel, Magic, Post-Apocalypse, universe as a sentient being
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 10:06:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12768729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayfelle/pseuds/rayfelle
Summary: She is the universe and the universe is her. She follows the pull to both bring destruction upon a world and to reverse it. She feels nothing, she is nothing, she is just the vessel.Until a boy comes and breathes life into her.





	saudade

Before her there is black. There are flickers of light, stars that are stuck in a constant cycle of death and rebirth. Silence stretches past lonely planets and pulsating galaxies, it wraps around every living thing that breathes together with her, with every soul that shines just as bright as the flashes of supernovas in the distance.

She breathes, she shudders, she falls.

Maybe they are eons that pass her by, maybe just years or just couple of seconds - it is hard to tell with the hundreds and thousands of worlds and dimensions that warp around her. There is no oxygen. She closes her eyes and lets the pull drag her down, away, _further_.

There is no end and there is no beginning. Neither to her, nor the universe.

…

Beneath her feet is scorching hot sand in the color of dying embers. The land stretches before her distant and lonely; it’s a duality of red and brilliant, clear blue of the sky. In the air is the scent of old death, of fires that used to consume everything and left behind ashes of pale gray.

With a breath and a stutter she moves. One step and another. Her feet leave indents in the sand, they weave through the dunes like threads, make the world seem stitched up together from pieces previously broken and unfitting. Between the grains drops of red, red blood settle only to dry out in the burn of the sun.

There are no tears for her to cry.

The skin of her soles has burned away now, all that is left are raw and bleeding wounds. But she doesn’t feel, she just breathes in the steam and the vapor, doesn’t look back on the tracks that lead across the forgotten and left behind.

Far away, where horizon is just a distant mirage, shadows of tall towers start to break through the nothingness. She walks on. She breathes. She feels the universe shift inside of her.

…

The buildings before her are made of slowly crumbling stone. There are houses that look like skeletons now, barely standing upon unstable foundations. Next to them stand just a few structures that still can provide shadow and protection from the sun.

Creatures peer out of their windows as she walks through carefully laid out paths, their eyes distrustful and suspicious. Loss paints the village dark despite the light that never goes out. In the basements, she knows, are almost dry wells and fruits that still survive, but just barely.

The white of her dress flutters in the weak breeze, she finally stops. Before her stands a creature wrapped in worn-out cloth, only two eyes of foggy white shine through the folds. With every breath it takes the lungs inside of his chest rattle like broken machines, his arms flex where they lay against the sand, their length unnatural but natural at the same time.

“We have waited for you to come.” The creature speaks, the language broken and unused, almost forgotten between the sand storms and devastation. “ _For so long_.”

She tastes anger on the inside of her throat. Her heart beats together with every breath that the creature makes. “I only come when my presence has been earned.” It has been a millennia, a second, a blink since she last spoke. In her words the universe echoes like distant memories.

“We suffered, our people died, _our planet destroyed itself_.” The creature digs claws into the sand dyed with the blood of those that were sacrificed in the fires so long ago. She feels every soul that had gone out like the flame of a candle; she feels the fear that once was.

It taints.

From the houses the creatures continue to stare, to wonder, to _despise_. She raises her arm and covers the eye that never was, where the universe observes using her. “It was your creation, your sins, your punishment.”

…

Finally the sun sets.

Many moons need pass yet for the land to mend itself together, for life to once again sprout through the cracks of dried-out earth. The creatures shed layer after layer of clothes once the heat recedes enough for the dust to settle.

There is air to fill their lungs with. There are clouds slowly rumbling in the distance, covering up the starts that twinkle like rubies in the depths of the sky. It smells like rain.

She blinks, feels the pull once more.

…

“Do you have a name?” The woman is tall, half of her face is covered in barely healed claw tears. Her hair is cut short, blood trickles from one of her eyes. There are heavy metal earrings hanging from the lobes of her ears. “Even gods need names.”

“I am no god. I am a messenger.” She speaks, her voice flat and emotionless. It has been so long since she last felt anything other than this gaping _nothingness_ and apathy. Perhaps, there has never been anything else to begin with.

The woman blinks her snake eyes and hisses so quietly it seems more like a whisper. Humidity presses onto them, smothering. “Doesn’t matter. You have it or not? A name.”

She looks up and blinks away the condensation that drips onto her face, makes her hair wet and heavy against her face. “Cyra. I think. I used to be.” Her memory is barely holding together, like frail webs during an ocean storm.

From the jungle someone screams. Scent of blood curls sticky around the two of them.

“Well then, Cyra the messenger of gods, let’s go fix this apocalypse.” The woman uncurls her tongue from her mouth, the muscle long enough to reach her abdomen. “I have to fulfill my duty to you.”

She feels the universe burn within her. “Your sins have been paid.”

…

From above the humidity turns sunrays into water, heat into steam that soaks up the air around her. What is left is thin layer of water, invisible to the eye but clinging to every pore and patch of uncovered skin.

She closes her eyes and lets the fall take her away.

The universe meets her in the blackness and silence. Around them the stars continue to shine, below her galaxies are born with just a flicker of a though and tickle. Life is never-ending, even if death follows close behind.

“I know.” She says to the universe, to nothing and everything at the same time. “But she asked.”

Around her the darkness shudders and she flinches. It gets colder, her skin turns blue where handprint shapes wrap around her arms and legs.  She looks down on the indents, on the skin that quickly changes from blue to black. If she could feel, then surely screams would be filling the space and in-between.

The hold doesn’t release. She looks up and towards the world that starts to _pull_. “My name is Cyra. I won’t forget.”

…

She wakes up to icy walls and oily smoke, to clang of metal against metal and hiccupping motor purr. The warm furs piled onto her are heavy and smell faintly of lavender. Underneath the sheets are scratchy against her skin, her dress catches onto the rough material when she moves.

Her arms are wrapped up in thick bandages, covering the touch of universe still burned into her body.

In the middle of the room a fire crackles, outside the scratched up windows snowstorm rages on. This world is cold and foreign, unforgivable in a way that no other until now has been. Strangely, she feels safe and at home, here. As if once before, long ago, she had danced between falling snowflakes and talked with the spirits of winter winds.

The metal door whines low and hurt as it opens, a boy with hair the color of soot and eyes a vivid green steps into the room. From his fingers an eye-patch made of metal hangs like a charm, pulses of magic run through it like the beating of a heart.

“We waited for a long time, messenger of the Gods.” The boy says, his lips chapped as they form the words.

…

She slides her fingers over the warm metal of the eye-patch, feels the ebb and flow of the magic that sparks a path after her fingertips. The boy had said that the universe should not hear of this, that the universe would only destroy and take away.

“My name is Vetseke. Our people have known of you for so long that legends were born to depict your image, your words, your duty.” The look in the boy’s eyes is one of a predator in the middle of a hunt. Behind the rough beauty and the softness of the furs draped on his shoulders, there is something dangerous. Something _wild_.

Vetseke reaches out and she stands still, the inside of her for once as calm as ocean waters after a storm, there is nothing there to whisper into her ears about the sins to be paid and rewards given. She is a part of the universe, but the universe is not a part of her. Not in this moment.

Pity in Vetseke’s voice is thick enough that the stench of it tickles her nose and bites into her being. It’s uninvited, unneeded. “Sorry, but I will use you as well. To get back to the universe. To free you from the shackles made of stars.”

The promise breathes life into the fire, into the snow. It snaps like a whip between her and the boy.

…

She strands before the people of Vetseke’s village. They are thin, with frost-bitten noses and fingers lost to the cold. Machines hum like angered nest of bees around them, in the cutting winds of the space-cold world.

The universe is like lava eruption inside of her, it burns her now with the anger of being cut off, with the unwillingness to let go of the one tool that has lasted this long. Next to her Vetseke stands attentive, his green eyes just as cold as the air around them.

“Your sins have been paid.” She breathes and closes her eyes. From behind the curtain of her black hair the universe trickles out from where once her eyeball was, like slime it sticks to her skin. “This as well will come to an end.”

The people of the village fall on their knees, some have flames of deepest form of repulsion etched into their faces. But she doesn’t care. Nothing can hurt her enough to make her feel. Nothing matters for her death was stopped eons and lifetimes ago.

Stars seep from her, the winds freeze and retreat. The universe whispers in her ear about another planet that needs to be punished. She is there one blink and gone the second.

…

As she steps through the universes with her feet bare and vulnerable, Vetseke holds onto her hand and doesn’t let go. The eye-patch wraps around his face like bandages do to an injured man.

…

The universe she breathes in is alive with activity. Neon alike to northern lights spreads far and wide, like ants in a colony the life trickles from one corner of the land to the other, accompanied by the thousands and millions of voices and emotions.

In the middle of it all the core of the planet weeps.

She feels every painful groan and crack of the planet under her palms. Inside of her soul the seconds that tick away to the end echo with clarity that only the universe is able to feel. Every time she is to call upon the forces of the nature to take back what is rightfully theirs she feels like crying for the hearts that will stop beating, for the small dots of memories that will no longer exist.

“What… what are we doing here?” Vetseke asks. His skin shines with sweat as he kneels on the ground, soft grass grasped in his fingers. “I ha-have never felt anything like this.”

She spreads her arms wide and breathes the last moments of peacefulness. “They need to pay for what they have done. Just like your planet, just like the ones that I was pulled onto before yours.”

…

The water rises slowly. It is a quicksand trap – silent as the waves slowly cover and ruin everything in their way. Underneath the stormy grey of the sea foam, the ruins that rust and crumble, the soaked-through earthly membrane, the core sighs in relief.

She hears the gratitude, louder than the death that smells like wildflowers in the air.

“How… how can you do this? How can the universe _do this_?” Vetseke’s body trembles with the weakest sparks of magic, it longs for machines that are no longer near. Grief turns his beauty into something twisted and ugly.

She sighs and sways in the winds, tries to keep standing as the universe inside of her still drips from her like poison. “The planet was dying. Now, it will have a new start. The same as yours needed a time of rest.”

Before and below them creatures still flee and beg for their lives. Before them the planet continues to pulse.

Vetseke’s eye-patch glows brightly as he cries for the destruction that makes way to rebirth. His sorrow and compassion breaks free from his body as a scream that tears apart his lungs. Pain always starts the process of healing, of moving on.

…

The calling of the universe is one that she cannot ignore. However, Vetseke’s fingers wrapped around her own are warm and grounding, in a way. The boy’s frame shakes with every galaxy that floats past, with every whistle of a world died and reborn once more.

“How can you do this?” He asks again, voice hoarse and tears dried out. Behind them the space breaks into little glass pieces, the universe’s hands tearing everything apart.

She lets the darkness lead her onto the next destination, the next task that needs to be done. Inside of her the emptiness spreads like poisoned lead. “I have been doing this for as long as I remember myself. There is no way to escape. I am the universe and the universe is me.”

Vetseke just holds tighter, his fear bitter like acid. “And before that… what were you before _this_?”

She has no answer, for she doesn’t know. There is no before. There never has been.

…

Time stills between them and everything else. Vetseke’s skin is so incredibly warm against the smooth porcelain of her own.

Another three worlds were left with the consequences of their sins, another two made calm and peaceful once more. Her work is one that takes and gives, that leaves a part of her into the invisible layers that float around each and every world and universe that she touches.

“What will happen if you’re no longer the one to do this?” Vetseke asks, his gaze spans far away, across everything that stands before them. The magic in his eye-patch glows brighter still. There is something deep and old inside of his soul, something that she has never seen before.

She looks down where their fingers have entwined together, as if it was the most natural thing to do. She wonders, she tries to remember the gentle caress of oxygen against her parched lungs. “The flow will still go on.”

Vetseke reaches out to touch the stars even if they are millions of light-years away from them both. “And what will happen with you?” His presence beside her grows bigger and bigger, until it consumes everything in the small pocket of space they are hidden in.

“I don’t know.”

Somewhere far away, a planet crumbles to dust together with her words.

…

She brings back two more words from the end and to five more she gives their sentences when Vetseke takes her face into his hands and blinks away his tears.

“I promised to save you. And so I will, Cyra. Even if I must to pay the highest price to do so.”

It takes a second but maybe an hour when he takes off his eye-patch and breaks the gems wound into it one by one. Light scatters, glass breaks and Vetseke crumples along the asteroid belt like a puppet with broken strings.

The universe _rumbles_ in anger.

…

They slide from world to world, from one reality to another, dimensions blur together like circus lights outside of a carrousel. Magic throws them around like forgotten dust bunnies.

Sometimes, when she closes her eyes, there are fields of green grass before her. The color of Vetseke’s eyes – _freedom_ , she dares to think.

But the universe is stronger than both of them. It knows better, has seen more and wraps everything within itself. Magic, built upon spite and thirst for revenge, was never meant to last long and hide for eternity someone, who hates too much and overflows in his feelings.

The universe wraps her skin in its cloak, births glass sharp enough to cut and make her bleed out. If she could feel pain she would be screaming once more. But there is nothing but cold and smothering emptiness. “I know. But you never told me before.”

Vetseke is laid before her feet, floating atop a cluster of stars so bright they blind. His eye-patch has long since been scattered in all corners of the space the universe has locked them into. Magic just as old as it is new flickers like the wings of a butterfly.

“I know.”

…

There is something strange about suddenly being able to feel again. The rush of it all comes back into her so quickly that it feels like choking on water instead of the sense of freedom that she is supposed to feel. There is pain where her skin and flesh has been cut into and blood drips heavy down her arms, there is the sharp sting of glass in her head and tears feel like scorching coals as they continue to well and flow.

The universe whispers about kindness and betrayal, about loyalty that seems to be worth nothing to her.

She breathes in the ash, the smoke, the vast _nothing_ of the space and lets it take over, poison her body. Her toes brush against the mirror edge of liquid milky ways and galaxies that are created from her blood, her last exhales. There is no reason for her to fight back for she is and always will be part of the universe, an extension of it.

Suddenly she falls and the universe pulls into itself, unwraps cold and invisible hands from her. Ancient magic rains like fairy dust along the shapes of what make up the most powerful force. Chanting echoes in the wispy shadows, her skin feels like it is on fire.

Around them snow starts to fall.

…

She wakes up to a world covered in white. The space is a reflection of itself – never ending and yet, so small that she barely fits between the folds.

When she breathes her breath comes out as white smoke. Next to her, Vetseke looks up with glassy eyes. He is still as stone and something inside of her mourns of a life that has been extinguished so cruelly. It hurts and she clutches where her white dress covers the heart that now beats. A foreign heart.

A whispers passes over the world, makes it sway. She chokes on her voice and yet the answer comes anyway.

“Why us?” She slides her fingers through the snow and towards where Vetseke lies in his cold, cold coffin. “This will not change anything. It does not… The universe?” Only now she can see where her skin has healed, only to leave scars behind.

From between Vetseke’s lips smoke rises.

A bell rings across the eternal white and the world shudders. In her chest she can feel the heart beating faster; she can feel warm blood circling in her veins. “But who will save him.” She lays her hand on Vetseke’s chest, closes her eyes and cries. “He had a different path to go.”

…

Gentle snow has turned into a snowstorm. There is nothing before her, nothing around her. Only Vetseke’s unmoving body remains a constant presence against her chapped palms. The green of his eyes stays as vibrant as it had been all those eons ago when she met him for the first time.

Just as suddenly as it had come, it stops.

Before her is a world of color, of warm sun that splays over the lush dark green of forests and fields that slowly blend into a village made of heavy wood and heavier stone. Between the painted-on visions little creatures move in and out of sight, like an afterthought. Machines puff out clouds of black as they move along dirt roads.

The universe slides the tips of its fingers across the swell of her cheek. Where once her eye served as a gateway through which it could see, now there sits an eye that used to be Vetseke’s as well.

“I’m… free?” She asks to the nothing and the everything. Galaxies fall from between her lips. “But the magic.”

The universe whispers of an exchange made, of a heart that a vessel could not and should not possess. In her arms a little creature with big ears and a missing eye stirs awake, painted in soft grays and whites. Far ahead the sun rises; in her arms a new life is born together with her rebirth, entwined with her.

She breathes. She smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to try my hand with an original work and this idea had been floating in my mind for a while now and... here is is.   
> Not sure if everything is uuuh... understandable? The plot changed along with the story and in the end i strayed very far from what I had originally in mind but... This is good, I like this.
> 
> Hopefully, you liked it! :)


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